A Simple Act of Violence Read Online Free PDF

frowned. ‘The what? The FBI?’
    ‘I’m afraid so . . . chief has asked for help from the FBI. They’ve sent someone to teach us how to do this shit.’
    ‘This isn’t federal . . . what in God’s name do they have to do with this?’
    ‘It’s a helping hand, Robert, and I sure as shit could do with one. The chief spoke to Judge Thorne . . . gotta remember we have our election party coming in the New Year. No-one’s gonna be losing their job over this, let me assure you. I need someone to head this thing up, and you’re the man. Afraid that’s the way it’s gotta be. Maybe it’ll give you something to get your teeth into, eh? Maybe it’ll remind you why you worked so hard to be a detective in the first place.’
    ‘I have a choice?’ Miller asked.
    ‘Fuck no,’ Lassiter replied. ‘When the hell did any one of us have a choice about this kind of thing? You had three months’ vacation from this shit. You’ve been back a week. I need you to go make nice to the FBI, and then you and Roth pull all the files together, go through them, get this thing moving. We have four dead women, I have the chief all over me like a rash. There are more column inches about this than Veterans Day, and I need you to be a fucking hero and save the day, alright?’
    Miller rose from his chair. He felt the weight already. He felt the sense of impending pressure that would bring the delicately balanced house of cards that was his life crashing down around his ears. It would fall silently. There would be no warning. He would just wake up one morning incapable of stringing a sentence together or making a cup of coffee. He did not need a serial killer. He did not need to be responsible for a headlining multiple homicide case, but even as he considered this he wondered if he hadn’t created his own justice. Perhaps it was a way out of his indecision. It could be the end of him, or perhaps his salvation. He looked at Lassiter, opened his mouth to speak, but Lassiter raised his hand.
    ‘You asked if you had a choice. You got your answer. Go see the FBI and make some sense of this bullshit would you?’
    Miller started toward the door.
    ‘One other thing,’ Lassiter said.
    Miller raised his eyebrows.
    ‘Marilyn Hemmings is the coroner on this. You will have to deal with her. The press will get wind of this for sure. After that picture in the Globe I don’t need to tell you—’
    ‘I get it,’ Miller said. He opened the office door.
    ‘If I had someone better . . .’ he heard Lassiter call after him as he closed the door gently behind him.
    Know the feeling , Miller thought to himself, and made his way towards the stairs.
     
    Several miles away, the outskirts of Washington, a young woman named Natasha Joyce stood in the doorway of her kitchen. She was black, late twenties perhaps, and there was something on the TV that caught her attention. She backed up from where she’d been washing crockery in the kitchen. She had a plate in her hand, a drying towel, and she tilted her head and squinted at the screen through the doorway while the anchorwoman spoke.
    A face appeared on the screen.
    A moment’s hesitation, perhaps something close to disbelief, and then the plate slipped from Natasha’s fingers, and even as she stared at the face on the tube she was aware of the plate falling in slow motion toward the floor.
    Her daughter, a pretty nine-year-old named Chloe who was playing on one side of the room, turned around to see her mother standing in the doorway, her eyes wide, her mouth open.
    Everything went slow. Everything felt insubstantial. Everything that should have taken a second took a minute or more.
    The plate reached the ground. It too seemed to hesitate for a heartbeat, and then it exploded into twenty or thirty pieces. Natasha screamed in surprise, and because she screamed her daughter screamed, and for a moment Natasha was puzzled because she knew she’d dropped the plate, she knew it would reach the ground and break,